“It is a very weird situation,” said Dr. Andre Kalil, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
“Is he being over-treated or undertreated? We don’t know.”
One of the therapies being given to Mr. Trump, a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies made by Regeneron, is in the earliest phase of testing, and there is only a recent news release from the company regarding its effectiveness. In one trial, the cocktail is being given to recently exposed or infected people, especially those who may not be able to rouse a potent immune response on their own. By age and gender, Mr. Trump falls into the subgroup of people whose immune system may not be able to fend off the virus on its own.
There is the issue of how long has he had the virus, and there is information that suggests Trump may have had it before the debate with Biden on Thursday. How long he has been interacting and potentially giving it to others, including Biden? He disclosed on Friday.
The company issued a news release last month citing preliminary data from a continuing study hinting that the drug might help people early on in the disease, and but also hinting that if it is not given early, before a patient develops antibodies, it is probably not worth giving, Dr. Walensky noted.It is unclear how long Mr. Trump had been infected. The doctors would not disclose when he received his last negative test result; he attended a fund-raiser on Thursday although aides said he was showing some possible symptoms Wednesday and Thursday.
Mr. Trump took the first experimental therapy on Thursday — the Regeneron combination of two antibodies. Each of the antibodies is a powerful blocker of the virus in laboratory studies. Like all antibodies, these are proteins — one was isolated from a patient who recovered from Covid and the other was made by Regeneron in a mouse with a human immune system.Mr. Trump began taking the second drug, remdesivir, on Friday. It enters infected cells and blocks viral replication.The Regeneron antibody cocktail has not been approved, nor has it been given emergency approval use by the Food and Drug Administration, a designation that allows a company to sell a promising drug while it is still being tested. But patients can sometimes get experimental drugs from a company if a doctor requests them and the F.D.A. and the company agrees. That is how Mr. Trump got the antibodies from Regeneron.
But what is not known is whether the combination of remdesivir and monoclonal antibodies is the best way to fight the virus.That combination, said Dr. Michelle Prickett, a pulmonary and critical care specialist who has treated hundreds of Covid-19 patients at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, is “uncharted territory.”For the first time, Trump looks haunted and genuinely afraid. He's also taken off his orange makeup.
There are also indications that Trump was threatened by his medical staff to go to hospital while he could still walk, or be taken out on a stretcher.
There are indications that he was given oxygen before he was airlifted to the hospital.
So it looks like Trump has ignored symptoms and ignored medical advice. It's called learning the hard way.
[sources: New York Times and the Guardian].
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